The Police Sargeant And The Red Light

Not too long ago, I was leading a seminar on emotional intelligence and we were discussing stress.

I made the statement that much of our stress is unnecessarily created by the way we think about, feel about and view the role of "rules" in our life. Someone asked me to give an example, so I did. 

I asked the audiance (about 45) "How many of you stop at a red light and wait until it turns green to go?" Everyone raised their hands. Me included.

Then I asked "How many of you would stop at a red light and wait until it turned green to move forward, if it were 2 a.m. and absolutely no traffic in sight?"

Again, all hands were raised...except mine.

I explained that I would certainly stop at the red light. But, I'm also likely going to go through the red light if there were absolutely no other vehicles around. I don't see the wisdom or the need to sit there and wait for some arbitrary "rule" to tell me when it's safe to move forward.

I didn't think it was such a big deal, but I've been wrong millions of times before. It was a bigger deal than I thought, to more people than what I would have thought. 

 Especially to one police sargeant in the group. He got quite upset and said I was teaching people to break the law.

Now, I'm pretty good at thinking on my feet, but I had to give that one some thought before I answered. After all, where would society be without rules and laws?

When I replied to him, here's what I said:

"I respect the law and I respect rules. And I respect those of you who serve the law and enforce the rules. At the same time, I think that rules and laws were meant to serve us, not the other way around.

So, there are times, when blindly adhering to a law or any rulebook defeats the purpose of the law or rule to begin with, which is to help us in some way, to enhance our lives."

The police sargeant didn't quite see it that way. He continued to stress himself out the rest of the day.

Now, you might be laughing at this police sargeant and thinking he really needed to lighten up.

But, it got me to thinking. How many "rules" did I fall prey to that did nothing more than bring the stress on?

What about you?

How can you tell?

Here's a really simple way. Ask a few people to let you know anytime you use these words:

• Should
• Ought
• Must
• Have to

These words are clues to when you are inferring that there is some rule out there that demands obediance.

Really?

Maybe, in more cases than we might think, we just might be better served by questioning a certain rule we have been living by and then deciding to do something different.

I'm just saying...

http://www.alanallard.com Alan is a consultant, executive coach and speaker.